


Tattooed on the Heart

by madame_faust



Category: The Hobbit (2012), The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Body Image, Gen, Hijinks & Shenanigans, Kink Meme, bb!dorf addiction, fun times in ered luin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-04
Updated: 2013-03-04
Packaged: 2017-12-04 07:38:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/708210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madame_faust/pseuds/madame_faust
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fill for the kink meme: "Dwalin notices more and more that he is going bald, and so does everyone else.</p><p>Wanting to make Mister Dwalin feel better Kili takes to drawing on a throughly passed out Dwalin when he comes to stay over after a night of heavy drinking with Uncle Thorin."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I own nothing and am making no profit from this story. Read the original prompt and fill here: http://hobbit-kink.livejournal.com/5346.html?thread=12059362#t12059362
> 
> This is going to be a two-parter, hopefully I'll get the second half up tonight.

It was something that was never spoken of aloud. There were several subjects that were verboten in the presence of the survivors of Erebor. One was the desecration of the corpse of Thrór, old King Under the Mountain. Another was speculation on the possible whereabouts of Thráin, his son, who disappeared shortly after the Battle of Azanulbizar. The third was the fact that Dwalin, son of Fundin, was slowly but surely losing his hair.  
  
Hairlessness was as uncommon among Dwarves as a breakout of the clap in a monastery and just as embarrassing.  
  
If their race could be accused of vanity, it was in regards to their crafts first and foremost and their hair and beards a close second. Dwarrow men and women alike grew their hair long and plaited it, in days of plenty, with strands of precious metal or gems and exotic pearls. Children and their hair braided by their parents in the morning and before bedtime, lovers tucked sprigs of heather in between strong ropes of hair in the springtime and the corpses of the fallen had their hair and beards brushed and lovingly tended to one last time by their closest kin.  
  
‘Hairy as a Dwarf’ was an idiom as well-known among the races of Middle-earth as ‘stubborn as a Dwarf.’ For who’d ever heard of a bald dwarrow? The very idea was laughable.  
  
But _no one_ laughed at Dwalin. Who dared do so? Laugh at the legendary warrior who was said to bathe in the blood of Orcs and use the bones of Goblins to pick his teeth after a meal? You’d be signing your own death warrant, surely. The great hulking figure, stalwart companion of Thorin Oakenshield, commanded respect the moment he stood up. He was so massive, the top of his head scarcely cleared the doorway of modest dwarrow-dwellings.  
  
The top of a head that was perilously close to becoming bald as an egg as the years wore on.  
  
Dwalin’s hair started to fall out noticeably when he was still very young indeed. In his early eighties he could not fail to notice a steady widow’s peak forming on his browline. There were few mirrors among the exiles, even fewer opportunities to waste time gazing into them, but Dwalin noticed. How could he not? It was a _humiliating_ prospect, he was young, for Durin’s sake, he’d only come of age a few years ago! How was it possible that he was losing his hair so early?  
  
Balin, like their father, began to go grey around Dwalin’s age and since the younger of the brothers was nearly identical to their father in every way, he was prepared for that eventuality. Expected it, even. But his hair remained stubbornly dark as ever it had been, there was just...less of it as time went on.  
  
In an attempt to stave off the inevitable, Dwalin stopped fixing braids in his hair (and beard, just in case it spread), but by the time of Azanulbizar, he accepted the fact that the situation was essentially hopeless. So many tore their beards in grief following the bloodbath that he hardly stuck out. His brother cut his own hair and never grew it long again; sometimes, when he was feeling especially sentimental and maudlin, Dwalin wondered whether it was _only_ for their father’s sake that Balin did so, but he knew better than to ask.  
  
It would be a lie to pretend that he was not tempted by the tinctures and potions untrustworthy peddlers tried to pawn off in the villages of Men, snake oils that were said to cure everything from a hangover to measles, but Dwalin never wasted his money. He was desperate, but he wasn’t stupid.  
  
The years passed, his hair continued to fall out and his reputation prevented him from taking much teasing about it. Dwalin was not an overly vain soul, as long as he could work and fight, heconsidered himself well off, but sometimes he caught sight of himself in a new-forged blade and cursed his luck. This became especially frequent when the lady Dís took to courting and selected for her husband a lad with a full head of long locks, bright and bonny as gold.  
  
Even so, at the end of the day, all this wondering was pointless. Even if he _was_ himself gifted with Víli’s blonde hair, he would glumly think to himself, she probably still wouldn’t have gone for him.

Dwalin was a near constant presence in the house Thorin shared with his sister and nephews. Prior to, during, and after Dís’s marriage, he would stop by for supper, pipes or drink most nights. Thick as thieves the lot of them were, no matter if they spent their working days together as well. It was a blessing from Mahal to find a craft one loved and good folk to share it with; in that way, Dwalin was content with his life. He was not the only resident of the Ered Luin to find the royal family pleasant company; in the wintertime, when they were prosperous, they were known to host some merry gatherings indeed.  
  
The night before had been just such an occasion. A family of miners, close friends of Dís’s husband before he passed, had taken a shine to the small family and came with meats and pies. Bofur brought his pipe and Bombur, the younger brother, his wife and small brood of children to romp and make merry with Fíli and Kíli. Glóin came with his own young son, elder brother, wife, father-in-law and three barrels of ale which were drained dry by the end of the night. The ‘Ri family also turned up, Irpa, with her eldest and youngest sons and the middle one shocked them all by arriving in the middle of the festivities sporting a half-healed black eye and wild tales of his adventures abroad.  
  
Nori was a scoundrel, but a pleasant scoundrel and Dís was terribly fond of him. So was Dwalin, come to that. If they were home, perhaps the King Under the Mountain ought not host known criminals under his roof, but the Blue Mountains were not their home and Thorin had no authority to punish wrongdoing. Besides, Dwalin thought as he accepted a challenge to a drinking contest with Nori and Glóin, probably better in the long run for someone on the wrong side of the law to remember they owe you for a few square meals.  
  
Glóin wound up winning by default; Nori conked out on the floor by the fire and Dwalin was too old to drink himself sick for pride. Besides, Dís could be awfully mischievous when she had a few rounds in her. With a sly grin on her face, she took up a quill and ink and penned a few runes across Nori’s forehead that she absolutely would _not_ read aloud to the dwarflings, but made the adults in the room roar with laughter.  
  
“Oh, come on, Dís,” Thorin scolded her, but his eyes were laughing. “How old are you, fifty?”  
  
“Well, he deserves it!” she shot back with a laugh. “Comes to my house, enjoys my hospitality and doesn’t even save me a dance!”  
  
“I thought I’d raised him up better than that,” Irpa tutted, taking up the quill as well and scrawling ‘Ruby’ along her son’s cheek. “When he was a wee babe, he had the loveliest red hair, broke my heart when it darked up and faded to brown on me!”  
  
“Here, let me have a go,” Dori begged, taking up the quill and adding his own commentary all over his brother’s face.  
  
Dwalin sidled up to Dís, drinking making him cheerful and bold. “So, guests are obliged to dance with the hostess, eh?”  
  
She turned and looked up at him, eyes sparkling, “‘Course, they are, didn’t you know? You’re not a _guest_ , really, I’d not call you a guest, but I’d be _awfully_ grateful if you humored me. You know I love a dance.”  
  
Dwalin laughed and took hold of Dís’s arm, swinging her close to him. “Lassie, it’d be a _pleasure_ ,” he said and she grinned at him, lovely and slightly blurry around the edges from the ale.  
  
Bofur, recognizing a cue when he saw one, whipped his pipe out of his coat, stood on top of the wooden dining table and bellowed, “Take your partners!”  Thorin chose to sit the first dance out, instead taking up Víli’s gittern and adding to the general clamor.  
  
Dís and Dwalin were an athletic pair and enthusiastically cut a path through the other dancing couples, careful not to tread on the dwarflings who’d taken one another by the hands and tried to copy the steps of the adults. At one point Dwalin lifted her clear off her feet and she responded by tangling her fingers in his hair and pressing a sloppy, drunken kiss right on the top of his head. Thorin and Balin were probably the only two souls who might realize that the red tint to his face was not caused solely by the heat of the room.

The night passed in song and laughter, eventually Nori roused himself enough to join in (not a word was said about the scribbling on his face, he kept wondering why his little brother could not look at him without bursting into giggles). When their stores of ale were exhausted and the children lay in tired little clumps around the room, the party eventually broke up. Dwalin stayed behind to help tidy up while Dís and Thorin put the children to bed. He was about the hie home when he noticed that one of the chairs by the dying fire seemed awfully comfortable...maybe he’d just rest his eyes for a minute before heading out.  
  
And in the comfortable chair by the fire was exactly where Thorin found his oldest and dearest friend, head tilted down on his chest, snoring slightly. Chuckling to himself, he stuck his head in the room Dís shared with her sons and said that Dwalin would be staying the night. Before he nodded off, Thorin disappeared in his room and returned a moment later with a blanket which he threw over Dwalin’s unconscious form; wouldn’t do to have him wake up cold and grumbling in the morning.  
  
As was the wont of children, when everyone in the household was hoping for a blissful night’s rest before greeting the dawn, they were up hours before they were meant to be. Kíli was just such an early riser. “Fee,” he whispered, poking his brother on the back of the head. “ _Fee_. Are you awake?”  
  
Fíli took after his mother and uncle; he slept when he could get it and was loathed to sacrifice even a few minutes that could be spent snuggled beneath his warm blankets. “G’back t’sleep, cabbagehead,” he mumbled, batting vaguely at Kíli’s hands.  
  
The younger of the pair frowned. Well, that would _never_ do. He slipped out of bed and padded across the rug to his mother’s bed. “Mam,” he tugged at one of her long braids, hanging off the bed and dangling to the floor. “Mam, wake up!”  
  
Dís made a disgruntled noise, knowing immediately which of her sons was rousing her in the pitch-black. “Don’t pull hair, Kíli,” she said, the words half muffled in her pillow. “S’too early for breakfast, we talked about this, remember?”  
  
Now that she mentioned it, he vaguely recalled. If he woke and it was still very dark outside he was to go to the window and look at the sky. If it was blue around the edges, then he could wake everyone up. Kíli climbed onto the little stool by the window that had been placed there expressly for that purpose. Still black. Too early to be awake.  
  
But the fact remained that he _was_ awake and not likely to go back to sleep. What to do, what to do? Maybe Uncle Thorin felt like rising early. He never had any other day, but Kíli was an optimistic little dwarf and supposed that things might be different today. As Mister Balin liked to say, there was a first time for everything.  
  
The sitting room still carried the smell of last night’s pies and hummed to himself a snippet from a song that Mister Bofur played to keep himself company; the house could be awfully quiet when everyone was asleep and the silence was a little scary sometimes. One never knew what horrible creatures lurked in the darkness.  
  
A loud snarling noise from by the fireplace made Kíli jump a mile, falling into one of the kitchen chairs. Was it a warg? How did it get in the house? He had to _tell_ someone, but he was only a little dwarfling. By the time he sounded the alarm, the thing would have gobbled him up with two snaps of its dripping, massive jaws -  
  
A snort. Wargs didn’t snort, did they? From behind his makeshift shield, Kíli’s eyes, adjusting to the darkness and spied a figure in one of their armchairs that, though large, was definitely not warg-shaped. “Mister Dwalin!” the dwarfling called, joyfully. It was a rare treat when Mister Dwalin spent the night over and it usually meant they were having bacon for breakfast since he liked it and Mam would cook it up special for him.  
  
But Mister Dwalin remained as stubbornly asleep as his mother and brother. Even when Kíli managed to get a rushlight going, the grown dwarf slept on, dim light reflecting off his round, shiny head.

Now _there_ was an idea and Kíli’s eyes lit up when he decided on the perfect way to pass his morning until breakfast. Mister Nori looked so funny when everyone drew on his face the night before and Mister Dwalin’s face extended a lot further back than Mister Nori’s. AND Kíli was meant to practice writing his runes between lessons; this would kill two birds with one stone!  
  
Puffed up with his own cleverness, Kíli lit a candle and dragged a chair across the room so he could stand on it and be on level with Mister Dwalin’s head. He picked up the ink bottle from the night before, but could not find the quill in the gloom; no matter, he could use his fingers just as well, they were skinny enough to fit down the neck of the bottle. There was only the question of what to write.  
  
Well, his name, of course. It was the first thing that came to mind. The dwarfling carefully drew the four runic symbols that comprised his name, taking care not to smudge. There. But that was only Dwalin’s forehead and he had a LOT of skin left to cover. Casting his mind about for inspiration, Kíli’s eyes fell on the tattoos that darkened Mister Dwalin’s knuckles and arms. He was too young for tattoos but most of the grown dwarves he knew had a couple. Mam had two big axes on her back, so he drew two crossed axes over Mister Dwalin’s ear for he too was a weaponsmith of great skill.  
  
It was not until Kíli finished the first one that he realized he had the blade going the wrong way. He was about to spit in his hand and wipe it off, but he remembered his manners. Mam said it was rude to spit unless someone paid you _grievous_ insult and Mister Dwalin was one of his favorite people in all the wide world. Not that Kíli had seen much of it, but he was sure that even if he traveled as far as the sea - no, as far as the Iron Hills, all the way to Erebor itself - Mister Dwalin would still be one of his favorite people.  
  
Considering that, he drew one of the few runes he knew that did not stand for an individual letter, the symbol for strength. Because Mister Dwalin was strong, he carried both Kíli and Fíli on his shoulders at once and last night he tossed Mam in the air like she didn’t weigh more than a feather pillow. And Kíli knew from experience, trying and always failing to roll Mam out of bed in the mornings, that she was very heavy.  
  
Actually, Kíli reflected to himself as he continued to paint all along the top of the grown dwarf’s head, it was good that Mister Dwalin now had something covering up all his skin, since he did not have hair on his head like he should. Once he and Fíli asked Mam why it was that Mister Dwalin did not have hair on top of his head.  
  
 _”Did he lose it in a fight? Like teeth?”_ Fíli especially wanted to know. Mam said of course he didn’t and some folks didn’t have as much hair as others, like how some folks were shorter and some taller and it didn’t much matter, but they ought not bring it up again, _especially_ not to Mister Dwalin.  
  
 _”Why?”_ Kíli asked. Surely Mister Dwalin _knew_ he was missing half his hair. Didn’t he?  
  
 _”Because Mister Dwalin will likely think you’re teasing him and he won’t take it well,”_ was the firm reply.  
  
 _”We wouldn’t tease Mister Dwalin!”_ they chorused, horrified at the very thought.  
  
Their mother smiled and ruffled their hair simultaneously. _”Then say nothing about it and there’ll be no cause for fuss, will there?”_  
  
Pulling back and squinting at his handiwork, Kíli smiled proudly to himself. Yes, that was better. From a distance, someone might not even realize Mister Dwalin didn’t have hair on top and he would never have to worry about anyone teasing him again.


	2. Chapter 2

Kíli worked for so long that the sky outside the windows had gone from dark blue to rosy pink. Kíli jumped off his chair, ink splattering onto his shirt and skipped off to his room, impossibly pleased with himself. “Wake up, Mam!” he said, throwing himself on his mother, a shapeless lump beneath the blankets. “I’m hungry!”  
  
Dís sighed and rolled over, favoring her youngest with a tired smile. “Are you?” she asked, squinting at him in the soft, pre-dawn light. “Let’s see if we can’t fix that, eh?” Sitting up and rubbing her eyes, she frowned to see that even before the day was begun, her youngest had managed to make a mess of himself, his fingers and shirtfront were black with ink. “What have you been up to?”  
  
“Practicing my letters,” he declared proudly.  
  
“Oh,” his mother said, eyebrows climbing toward her hairline. “Well done, love. Mister Balin will be very pleased to hear it.”  
  
Stifling a yawn, Dís rolled out of bed, tying her hair back loosely in a leather thong so it would not be in her way while she cooked breakfast. She vaguely recalled Thorin saying something about Dwalin spending the night and she hoped she had bacon in the larder for him. Dís padded toward the kitchen, eyes at half-mast. Her dancing partner was still fast asleep and she smiled to see that Thorin had loaned him one of his blankets; he was forever taking care of them, bless his heart.  
  
Taking up the candle Kíli left burning on the kitchen table, she walked over to the hearth with the intention of re-lighting the fire, but she stopped dead in her tracks when she saw what _exactly_ Kíli meant when he so cheerfully told her he was practicing his letters. Her mouth dropped open and the sound that emerged from her throat was a cross between an aborted scream and a choked guffaw. On the one hand, she dimly recognized, this was _very_ funny. On the other hand, this was also objectively _terrible_. The two often went together where her sons were concerned.  
  
“Kíli!” Dís hissed in a loud whisper. She longed to bellow his name at the top of her voice so he knew exactly how much trouble he was in, but she had no intention of waking Dwalin. “Get in here this _minute_ , lad!”  
  
He scurried into the kitchen and skidded to a halt in front of his mother. Breakfast already? That was _fast_ \- too fast for that to be the reason she called him in and he belatedly realized he was in trouble when his mother’s open palm connected with his backside in a hard smack.  
  
“Ouch! What’d I do?” he whinged, more indignant than in pain, rubbing his bottom and pouting.  
  
Dís was momentarily dumbfounded by the question. “Kíli, you don’t...you don’t practise your letters on people’s _faces_ ,” she said, a small part of her that was _not_ flooded with embarrassment and outrage reflecting that this was not something most parents had to explain to their children. She’d always known hers would be unique.  
  
“Why not?” he asked, all innocent confusion. “ _You_ drew on Mister Nori’s face.”  
  
Indeed she had. Not one of her most dignified moments, she recognized that now.  
  
“Mister Nori had it coming to him,” Dís replied, half to herself, as she tried to figure out how to remedy this ghastly situation. The ink was not _quite_ dry, if she got some warm water and a scrub brush, she could probably get it out...but Dwalin had not drunk so much the night before that he’d sleep through such ministrations.

Thorin had a sixth sense for his nephews causing trouble. Unfortunately, it only ever kicked in after the deeds were done and so the trend continued that morning. Voice still rough from sleep, he rumbled, “What’s all this?” and was answered when Dís gestured frantically at the still-sleeping Dwalin.  
  
Like his sister, Thorin’s immediate impulse was to shout and laugh, in that order. Fortunately he did neither. Not the most learned of their race, it did not take a genius to make the connection between Kíli’s inkstained fingers twisting guiltily behind his back to Dwalin’s current condition. “Kíli. Bedroom.” The little dwarfling opened his mouth to object, but his uncle’s glare made it clear he would hear no arguments. “ _Now._ ”  
  
Trudging away, kicking the floor and generally making it very clear that he did not agree with his caretakers’ judgments upon his actions. He was just about to pass over the threshold when he found the way blocked by Fíli.  
  
“Breakfast?” he asked expectantly, then his blue eyes went wide and he _did_ laugh out loud at the state of Mister Dwalin. If he’d known _that_ was what his little brother wanted to do when he jabbed at him under the covers, he would have gotten out of bed for sure. “Is there any ink left? Can I try?” Fíli asked eagerly.  
  
“No more room,” Kíli declared triumphantly. “I got him good. You’ll have to use Uncle instead.”  
  
Immediately it became very clear to the little dwarflings that Fíli would _not_ be using his uncle as a writing slate. Thorin crossed the room, grabbed them both by the back of their shirts and tossed his nephews on their bed, slamming the door shut behind them.  
  
The solid banging of the door roused Dwalin from slumber and he growled low, neck stiff after spending the night sleeping sitting up. He only had to chance a glance at the guilty faces of the siblings across the room from him to know that something was terribly wrong.  
  
“What?” he asked, face wary. If something truly dangerous was afoot, they would have roused him before then or taken up arms themselves. Not goggled at him like halfwits.  
  
“I am _so_ sorry,” Dís apologized, worrying her lip with her teeth. It was a nervous reaction Dwalin had not witnessed from her since she was a child and he became temporarily convinced that someone had died. “Some faeries took my youngest son away in the night and left a changeling in his place - ”  
  
“Kíli drew on your face while you were sleeping,” Thorin interjected, cutting off his sister’s rambling before she embarrassed herself. Dwalin reached up to his forehead and came away with black fingers, he frowned a bit, but the frown turned into a wide-eyed look of surprise when Thorin brought him a mirror to look at the full extent of his nephew’s scrawling.  
  
There was a long, tense quiet before Dwalin’s lips quirked and he laughed aloud. “Got the axes pointing the wrong way round,” he commented. “And I slept through it. Must’ve drunk more than I thought.”  
  
Brother and sister relaxed appreciably once they saw that Dwalin was taking everything in stride. “It’s my fault,” Dís admitted. “Kíli saw what I’d done with young Nori, thought he might have a go on you, I suppose.”  
  
“Lucky he didn’t write _exactly_ what you scribbled on young Nori’s brow or I’d be too ashamed to walk home,” Dwalin smirked at Dís. “Modesty and all.”  
  
She thwacked him on the arm. “Oh, aye, the very picture of modesty, you,” she rolled her eyes. “Anyway, you’re not going home just yet. Wash up, I’ve got eggs and bacon to fry up.”  
  
“Nah, I’ll head off now,” he said, causing Dís and Thorin to exchange a glance. Dwalin refusing breakfast? Perhaps he was more offended than he let on.

The feeling was only confirmed when Dwalin and Thorin re-met an hour later at the forge; Dís was dropping the boys off at Balin’s for lessons before she came to work and that was when the taller dwarf begged a favor of his prince.  
  
“Will you be minding if I take a week off?” Dwalin asked.  
  
Thorin stopped trying to get the fire going and looked up, eyes gone a bit wide in shock. “A week?” he repeated.  
  
“If I can’t be spared - ”  
  
“No, it’s not that, s’just...awfully sudden.”  
  
“Got some private business to take care of,” Dwalin said evasively. Then, not to prolong the discussion, asked, “So, what’ll it be, yea or nay?”  
  
After so many years of unswerving loyalty and companionship Thorin would be no kind of friend to refuse. Shrugging, he told Dwalin to take off as much time as he needed. “Lads’ll be put out,” he predicted, which was the closest he managed to get to saying ‘I’ll miss you’ before Dwalin set out.  
  
A week to the day after he left, the sun rose and set on the Blue Mountains and Thorin’s sister, with a pessimism that was foreign to her, began making dismal predictions about the likelihood of his return.  
  
“We’ll never see him again,” Dís lamented, carving a pattern into the blade she’d fashioned as their supper bubbled away in the hearth. “Or, if we do, he’s certainly never going to _speak_ to us again.”  
  
“Mind your fingers,” Thorin said absently, stirring the stew, noting that his sister was being awfully sloppy in her distress.  
  
“This is it,” she shook her head, paying her brother’s sound advice no heed whatsoever. “Up mountains, across plains, into battle and _this_ is where he leaves us. Over a pot of ink and misplaced good intentions.”  
  
“Did Mister Dwalin go away because of Kíli?” Fíli demanded, sitting up from where he’d been wrestling on the floor with his brother. Kíli’s grip on his brother’s braids went slack and his face went from contorted in playful rage to crumpled and on the verge of tears in less than a second.  
  
“ _Did_ he?” he asked, chin wibbling piteously.    
  
“No,” Dís replied automatically, setting her work aside and opening her arms so that Kíli could crawl into her lap.

“Sure he did,” Fíli reasoned, standing and rocking back on his heels. “Kíli drew on his head and then he went away. Can we trade? How about Mister Balin can take Kíli and we take Mister Dwalin.”

“I don’t want to live with Mister Balin!” Kíli was crying in earnest now, throwing his arms around his mother’s neck and hiding his face in her shoulder. “I want to stay here along of you!”

Thorin pinched the bridge of his nose and exhaled noisily. “Sounds like one little dwarfling doesn’t want his supper,” he said, giving Fíli a hard look. The elder boy deflated a little under the scrutiny and scuffed his toes on the floor.

“I was just _wondering_ ,” he mumbled, but his mother gave him a glare over his brother’s shoulder.

“There, there, my love,” she said, her soothing tone’s a sharp contrast to the steely look in her eyes as she rubbed Kíli’s back soothingly. “Brother was just teasing. Fíli’d never trade you for Dwalin. Would he?”

It took Fíli a minute to realize he was expected to corroborate this story.“I wouldn’t,” he said, after taking some time to think it over. “There’s not room enough for him our bed anyway, he’d take all the sheets.”

And that was all the assurance Kíli needed that his brother did in fact love him with all his heart and would never dream of sending him away.

The youngest of Durin’s line was wiping his eyes on his sleeve and preparing to rejoin his brother on the floor when there was a knocking at the door. Dís rose, Kíli on her hip to answer it and was pleasantly surprised to find Dwalin himself filling their doorway.  
  
“You’re a sight for sore eyes!” she cried, reaching up to embrace him with her free arm. It was drizzling some and his traveling cloak was damp.  
  
“Got room for one more?” he asked, holding out his arms to pick up Kíli who reached for him immediately as his mother pulled away.  
  
“Aye!” Kíli crowed happily. “Only you can’t stay forever as I’d have to live with Mister Balin and I don’t want to.”  
  
“I don’t want him to either!” Fíli added promptly, glancing over his shoulder to make sure Uncle Thorin wasn’t glaring at him still. He was not, he was smiling at Mister Dwalin and waving him inside.  
  
Crossing the room to take his friend’s cloak from off his shoulders, Thorin urged him, “Come in, come in.” He reached up to take Dwalin’s cloak so he would not have to put Kíli down - he’d had enough of the lad’s sniffling and wailing for one evening. Dwalin thanked him and Thorin turned to hang the garment by the fire, but halted when Kíli gasped and clapped his hands in delight.  
  
“You kept it!” he shouted, all excitement. “You see, Mam? D'you see?”  
  
Dís’s expression was all delighted shock. “Oh, that’s _very_ fine,” she gushed, rushing forward to look at the tattoos, still scarred around the edges and, raised here and there from the tapping of the needles, but exquisitely rendered “Very handsome,” she added with a sweet smile, but then, she’d always thought Dwalin an especially well turned out Dwarf.  
  
“Let me see!” Fíli insisted, raising his arms over his head and begging to be picked up. Dwalin obliged sweeping him up in his other arm so that the brothers could examine his latest markings.  
  
“Don’t touch!” Thorin warned when Fíli seemed about to do just that. After he completed his apprenticeship and got his first marks, Frerin promptly forgot about it and smacked him in his still-healing chest that evening while joking about something at dinner. It was not a pain that was easily forgotten. “Look with your eyes, not with your hands.”  
  
The lads were very obedient, chattering a mile a minute, asking what the various runes stood for - Fíli observing that Mister Dwalin had pointedly _not_ kept Kíli’s name across his forehead.  
  
“Well, that’d be stupid,” Kíli reasoned. “Folks’d think his name is Kíli and it’s not.” Then his eyes lit up and he pointed at one mark near the back of Mister Dwalin’s head. “I did that one!”  
  
It was the rune for ‘strength,’ rendered a bit more carefully and accurately, but undeniably there in the place where Kíli originally drew it. “Aye, laddie,” Dwalin nodded. “That you did.”

No one said anything about it. Balin smiled fondly when he saw his little brother again, but he merely patted him on the back and welcomed him home. If anything, those who did not know him well found the warrior even _more_ terrifying than they had before. It was rumored he did them himself in the heart of an active volcano, using the black blood of his enemies as a base for the ink and their bones for needles. Dwalin would neither confirm nor deny those suspicions, they made Thorin laugh, but Dís liked to add her own fuel to the fire when she could.  
  
“Can’t say for sure where they come from,” she’d shrug, handing over a cooking pot to a credulous Broadbeam dwarrowdam. “Oh, but did you hear about that massacre a few miles south? Well, I expect you will sooner or later, ghastly sight. A gang of bandits was found strewn in pieces along the countryside. Some bits was hacked so small what was left of ‘em couldn’t fit in a thimble. Odd thing, though. For all the carnage, you’d think there would have been more blood.”  
  
And the goodwife would look at hulking figure in the back, hard at work, eyes going wide. And Dís would smile pleasantly and say that pot she had was their own dear Dwalin’s work, wasn’t it quality? A big fat tip was the inevitable outcome of such exchanges.  
  
It was only fair to help him keep face, Dís reasoned, tossing the coins in her friend’s direction, eyes crinkling with mirth. Anyway, they’d hardly believe her if she told them the truth; that her own dear Dwalin was inspired by the finger painting of a sweet-faced dwarrow lad who only wanted to save him from having his feelings hurt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eep! When I originally posted this half the chapter was missing! How embarrassing!


End file.
